Bobby Lee’s Origin Myths takes cosmic Americana music to a whole other level.
Recorded in the pockets of free time between the tasks of early fatherhood in the depths of the current pandemic, this album finds Lee improvising freely on guitar with a variety of hallucinatory effects and a dusty drum machine. He takes the bare essence of folk, country and blues music and twists and distorts it through a cosmic lens until he has a totally new creature on his hands.
Take the dazed cowpoke strut of “Fire Medicine Man,” for instance. Through vaporous waves of wah-wah treated slide and a slowly trotting electronic beat that clops along like an old drunk horse, you can hear elements of country-blues buried deep. Make no mistake, those elements are there, but they’re mutated into something wonderfully offbeat, something…fresh.
This vibe is elaborated further on songs like “Rule The Summer Clouds” and “Looking for Pine and Obsidian,” which branch out into full-blown ambient-Americana soundscapes. Another fine example is “Impregnated by Drops of Rainbow,” which sounds like if early John Hammond and Neu! jammed over a motorik beat.
If Harvey Mandel’s Christo Redentor and Jerry Garcia’s first solo LP get just as much use on your turntable as your Popol Vuh and North Americans records, then you unquestionably need Origin Myths in your life.
You can order the album digitally from Tompkins Square this Friday, or you can preorder it on vinyl (which comes with an additional four songs) ahead of its May 7th drop date. Our UK readers can also score vinyl copies right from Lee’s Bandcamp page tomorrow, too
-KH
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